


For the Man who Has Everything

by Dawnwind



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-27
Updated: 2011-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starsky is injured on Christmas Eve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Man who Has Everything

"I feel like Tiny Tim," Starsky complained, fumbling with his crutch.

"God Bless us everyone", Hutch wanted to say, and "You look like a miracle," but he didn't. Instead, he cocked an eyebrow and grinned. "Look at it this way, Starsk, now you'll have Christmas day off, like you wanted."

"Hey!" Starsky stopped so quickly that the rubber bottom of the crutch squeaked on the linoleum floor like the sound of a basketball player streaking across the court. "Yeah!" He started to laugh and then sobered, "but you won't."

"Somebody's got to work on Christmas." Hutch shrugged. "Starsk, you know it doesn't mean as much to me as it does to you." Nothing would mean as much as the simple knowledge that Starsky had survived to celebrate the holidays. The sight of their drug dealer suspect bearing down on Starsky with his motorcycle was already enthroned in Hutch's mental shrine of worst memories ever--right next to Gunther's goons shooting Starsky last May.

"Never understood why you didn't like a holiday about giving." Starsky negotiated the electronic doorway with the skill of someone who'd been on crutches before and stood on the opposite side waiting while Hutch let a pregnant woman and two straggling toddlers out first.

Hutch smiled. Both kids were wearing matching t-shirts festooned with Santa's ginning face and brightly wrapped presents, and he looked up to see Starsky's dark blue eyes shining.

"Cute kids," Hutch said to the mom. Obviously harried, she gave a sudden surprised grin, the world-weary expression dropping away for a moment.

"Thank you," she said, shepherding the two boys to the curb.

"See?" Starsky smiled fondly. "You give all the time. What's the difference that everybody else tries to do it on one specific day of the year?"

"But that's exactly the difference." Hutch assessed Starsky's forward momentum with the crutches and the fresh ankle cast. "For the month of December, people put on fakey smiles and give the Salvation Army Santa a couple of bucks or help out at a soup kitchen on Christmas eve when every guy and his brother feels the need to show off his holiday spirit. Then they don't give a crap the other three hundred and sixty four days of the year." He patted Starsky on the chest, half to keep him in one place, half to ameliorate the sting of his statement. "Stay here, I'll go get the car."

"You give," Starsky said again. "All the time. And I can walk two hundred feet to your dirty squash. What'd you do, bribe the parking attendant to get the closest parking space without a blue wheelchair logo on it?"

"No." Hutch marched over to the LTD to open the passenger door, ignoring the uneven thump and shuffle following behind him. Foolhardy idiot, trying to show how macho he was--challenging the suspect on a chopper to a game of chicken when he was on foot. Hutch wanted to yell at Starsky--What the hell were you thinking? Do you try to get yourself killed on purpose? But instead, he prevaricated. "The hospital parking lot doesn't have valet parking. I just got lucky. Said to myself, if Starsky was driving the Tomato, what parking space would he wind up in?"

Starsky was laughing, the tilt of his eyes and the broad grin just highlighting the swath of road burn on his forehead. "I got lucky," he said softly.

"Yeah, you did," Hutch agreed, not quite ready to release all the pent up adrenaline and frustration he clutched in his belly. No, he wasn't quite in the holiday spirit. He was thankful and joyful, that much was true, but willing to forgive his fellow man and spread benevolence to every potential murderer and would-be assassin in the LA county? No, that was asking too much.

"Hutch, if that woman back there had asked you for a couple 'a bucks to tide her over, maybe get some Christmas presents for the twins, would you have given it to her?"

Hutch glanced over at Starsky before maneuvering the car out of the parking lot. This had to be some kind of trick question, but he wasn't entirely sure what Starsky's motive was. Too bad the mild painkillers the nurse had given him weren't knocking him out. Hutch would have liked some peace and quiet on the drive back to Starsky's house since he still had to get back to Metro and write up the fucking reports of his partner's encounter with a six hundred pound hunk of red and white metal. "I--I guess so, if I had the cash in my pocket."

"You can't remember to carry a pencil or a pen to save your life-"

"Ruins the cut of my jib."

Starsky snickered. "Sailed right into that one, didn't I?"

"Wind behind your back all the way."

"Don't evade the topic at hand..."

"What is this, a call in radio show?" Hutch joined the late afternoon stream of cars on the freeway, all the shoppers headed home after an exhausting day of gift buying. They should try watching their best friend get tossed butt over curls by a Harley and see how exhausted--how utterly wrung out and terrified--they'd feel. "Are the holiday dumps a real phenomenon, D.J. Dave, or just the imagination of hundreds of humbugs?"

"Humbug," Starsky shot back at him. "You always have one more twenty in your pocket. You'd'a given that woman your last Andrew Jackson to make her holiday special but you claim not to have an ounce of Christmas spirit."

"That's what I've got you for," Hutch said without thinking and his heart revved up double time.

Oops. He should have heeded the warning signs, kept an eye out for those fast breaks Starsky liked to pull on him.

"You've got enough holiday sparkle for the both of us, gimpy," Hutch amended, feeling a hot flush creep up the back of his neck.

"You better believe that, Jack." Starsky nodded, wincing when he shifted his weight and had to carefully move his casted foot. "So, Hutch, if I asked you straight out--no hiding behind some kinda childhood horror story of asking Santa for a Red Rocket racing sled and then seeing the blue one hidden behind your dad's mower in the garage..."

"I never asked for a Red Rocket racing sled." Hutch eased the Ford onto the off-ramp for Starsky's house, turning on the headlights in the quickly darkening twilight. "Now a sleek black toboggan would have definitely turned my head when I was ten."

"You just don't wanna talk about this, do you?" Starsky jabbed him with a finger.

Hutch twisted away from the probing but Starsky could be like a bloodhound on the scent when he got an idea in his head. "Would you quit that? I'm driving."

"WhatdoyouwantforChristmas?" Starsky asked all in a rush as if he was afraid of being cut off again.

"What?" Hutch parked in front of Starsky's house, mentally inserting breaks in the right places to unravel the question.

"What gives you joy?" Starsky asked more slowly, turning his face to Hutch so that very suddenly they were only inches apart. Hutch could smell the cool, bright scent of the candy cane Starsky had eaten while waiting for his cast to dry.

You, he wanted to say. You alive, you by my side, you with me always. Only you.

Instead, he said, "Starsky, I haven't got time for this. I have to get back to work--ream out that scumbag who ran you down, finish the paperwork. And man, there'll be mounds of it. Incident reports on top of the arrest report and..."

Starsky said something rude and very frustrated under his breath. "There can't possibly be one other guy on the entire planet who could piss me off faster'n you, Hutchinson. But there has to be something you want. An' I know it's not good will to men and--well, maybe peace on earth, knowing how you felt about the war I fought in." He licked his lips and Hutch had the sudden overwhelming desire to do that for him. "There's gotta be something that you want more than anything else."

It had gone too far. Hutch felt like he was standing on the edge of a high precipice looking straight down into a gorge below. If he said one thing, he'd fall to his death, but if he said another, a rope bridge might appear to lead him across a very shaky passage to salvation. Then, there was the fear that nothing at all would happen. That he'd be left clinging by his toes without any support at all. Just alone.

"You."

"Huh?" Starsky's eyes widened. Hutch could see himself reflected there, tiny, caught in the depths of blue iris. "Say that again, I don't think I heard you."

"Starsky!" Hutch started in annoyance, and looked into those blue eyes again and knew that he didn't need to cling to a rickety rope bring for survival, because there was two strong arms reaching out to him to draw him in close. "You," he repeated, far softer than he'd said it the first time.

"Yeah." Starsky smiled, hands warm on either side of Hutch's waist. "That's what I've been waiting for, Blintz."

It was like all the air had gone out of his lungs and he was filled with helium. Hell, he didn't need a bridge to get to Starsky, he could float there on his own. Hutch laughed incredulously. "You, too?" he asked inanely.

"Yeah, me, too." Starsky rubbed his thumbs up the slope of Hutch's ribs to his sternum and placed the flat of one hand over his heart. As if released from some kind of stasis, Hutch mirrored his movement, planting the palm of his hand over Starsky's heart, feeling the quickening beat. "That's for you," Starsky said. "It's always been for you."

"It's what I always wanted," Hutch whispered.

"Merry Christmas, Hutch," Starsky said and leaned in for a kiss.

"God bless us, everyone," Hutch quoted, aloud this time, accepting the best Christmas gift of his entire life.

FIN


End file.
